Open Letters

On behalf of Pregnancy Justice, staff attorney Emma Roth, submitted a comment to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in response to a proposed rule to strengthen reproductive health care privacy under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Drawing on Pregnancy Justice's work for over twenty years on cases where the state has intervened in the medical decision making of a pregnant person or the prosecution of them or their family on the basis of perceived risk of fetal harm, the comment recognizes that the proposed rule is an important step in the right direction for safeguarding reproductive health care privacy.

Pregnancy Justice, in coalition with other reproductive justice organizations and allies, submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in response to a proposed rule to strengthen reproductive health care privacy under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

The comments recognize that the proposed rule is an important step in the right direction for safeguarding reproductive health care information.

In July 2020, Pregnancy Justice joined numerous allies including Ancient Song Doula Services and Black Mammas Matter in signing an open letter that served as a national call for birth justice and accountability. Pregnancy Justice knows that just as police misuse their authority against Black, Brown, and Indigenous people on the streets, they also do so in hospitals and delivery rooms and with the assistance of health care professionals.

Having already written a statement challenging false and stigmatizing medical misinformation advanced in the context of the nationwide litigation seeking to hold pharmaceutical companies liable for the over- prescription of opioids in the U.S., Pregnancy Justice followed up with a letter regarding distribution of funds from Perdue’s bankruptcy settlement related to claims about its role in the national opioid addiction and overdose crisis.

After learning that Oklahoma Carter County District Attorney Craig Ladd is continuing to misuse his office to prosecute women who are pregnant and alleged to have used controlled substances, Pregnancy Justice engaged local and national experts to call on district attorney Ladd to drop the charges.

Pregnancy Justice recently sent a thank you letter to New York State Attorney General Letitia James to thank her for her efforts to ensure women across New York and the nation are able to access safe, legal abortions during the coronavirus (COVID-19) public health crisis as part of the multistate coalition of 21 attorneys general.

Some reports following New York’s passage of the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) asserted that the RHA somehow increases the risk of gender violence. Pregnancy Justice and Professor Julie Goldscheid (CUNY Law School) authored a statement challenging those claims, and other false claims linking laws criminalizing abortion and related feticide laws with protection of women from violence.

In February 2018, Ms Roberta Baker, a mother in St. Francois County, Missouri who lost her baby around 24 hours after giving birth, was charged with felony child abuse and neglect. Ms. Baker did not receive health care during her pregnancy and birth because she did not have a health care provider she could access or trust.

Pregnancy Justice and If/When/How wrote and organized a letter sent to the FDA, signed by organizations and experts in reproductive health and rights, public health, harm reduction, and HIV/AIDS. The letter opposes the recent warning letters targeting mifepristone and misoprostol as dangerous, and urges the FDA to remove the REMS for mife.

On May 31, 2019, Pregnancy Justice, along with Movement for Family Power and 20 non-governmental organizations, activists, public defense offices, academics, and others who work every day to advance the human rights of pregnant and parenting people submitted a set of recommendations to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women regarding the United States child protection and foster system.